Obtaining practical experience in medical training in the past has typically relied upon learning on animal models or on patients. The use of animals for such training is becoming unacceptable, expensive, and, from the point of view of application, has limitations due to anatomical differences from humans. Learning on patients is similarly unacceptable, as it places unnecessary risks on patients. Non-tissue-based simulators are being developed for numerous medical disciplines based on various technologies ranging from virtual reality and gaming to physical mannequins. One specific area that has been under-addressed, however, is training simulation for craniofacial and ocular traumas, which include injuries to the eye globe and surrounding tissues.
Physician training in eye trauma is increasingly concentrated in referral centers, resulting in fewer ophthalmologists with extensive trauma expertise. Conventional training of medics emphasizes saving a limb first, although loss of sight through delayed intervention can also result in permanent disability. Practical exposure of physicians to ocular trauma is becoming deemphasized in medical schools, (partly due to increase in the overall course load) and, as eye-trauma cases are more and more congregated to clinical environments in specialized “trauma centers” of regional clinical institutions (such as the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, for example), opportunities available for physicians to learn first-hand become more and limited. Facial and neck trauma can be complex, and techniques such as application of tourniquet may be inappropriate; control of hemorrhage may conflict with maintenance of airway, as when packing the oral cavity to control bleeding.
There emerges a need in a flexible training trauma simulation system (and, in particular, in a simulator of ophthalmological trauma) that is readily re-adjustable depending on the immediate need and that does not depend on availability of clinical environment. A multi-purpose simulation, teaching and performance measurement system to provide exposure of realistic, dynamic scenarios of ocular and craniofacial trauma to physicians and medics is required.